


tide, unbreaking

by Kierkegarden



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (and I made a lot of shit up because this isn't my fandom. Apologies to everyone.), Alt-Canon, Angst, Character Study, Cheating, Dialogue Heavy, F/F, Morally Ambiguous Character, My First Work in This Fandom, contrived scenario for character study purposes, love is a complex construct
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 16:50:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17410619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kierkegarden/pseuds/Kierkegarden
Summary: Nebula is looking past him, looking straight at Gamora, smiling. She still thinks it’s a competition, Gamora thinks, and wonders how to unbreak someone. If it’s possible for her, broken as she is, to unbreak someone.





	tide, unbreaking

i.

 

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Nebula’s head peeks around the corner into Gamora’s already too-small quarters, before letting herself in and flouncing beside her on the cot. Gamora can hear the sound of gears whirring somewhere, a distant heartbeat.

“And?” She curses her heightened senses. “You’re supposed to be a prisoner.”

Nebula’s eyes narrow, the breaking tide of anger lingering just below the surface. Gamora can feel it, can hear it raging. From hundreds of leagues above the surface, planets sometimes look like nothing but raging sea. Gamora knows better.

“Checking out the other cells,” Nebula spits, “How are they treating you?”

She knows, Gamora thinks, all of my weaknesses. Even better than I know hers.

“ _They_ doesn’t exist, sister dear,” Her tone is a pin drop on the whirring silence, “I am one of them.”

“And one of us?”

Gamora says nothing.

 

ii.

 

Nebula visits the next morning as well, before the artificial daybreak, the raucous banter and the music of a life in close quarters. The one thing Gamora misses from all the time she spent on her own is the silence. Only sometimes, only desperately. Quietude without whirring, or snoring, or singing. She will never get used to the lack of privacy, so she innovates her own silence. In the shallow belly of the Benatar, in her bunk, in the earliest of hours.

Nebula, of course, feels a right to that too.

“You really don’t like it here,” Nebula comments, “Do you?”

Gamora weighs the thought of not even responding.

“I like it,” she says instead, her tongue carefully fitting the words together against her teeth, “There are things I don’t like about it, but I like the feeling of home.”

For a second, Nebula’s eyes flash with something organic, before resorting back to shimmering ebony spite. She shrugs.

“It doesn’t _seem_ like you like it, not to me.”

“You’re the expert on me, then?” Gamora snorts.

“Biggest fan.” Nebula’s smile is crooked, frozen. It makes Gamora want to grab her sister, shake her shoulders and scream that she still has time. That her hands aren’t tied, she can grab control of her own fate and be free. She eyes the smooth metallic curve of Nebula’s arm and wonders if she even really believes that.

 

iii.

 

“Come in,” Gamora says, before Nebula can come in uninvited. She does it for all the wrong reasons, because she wants to regain the upper hand. Nebula’s eyes grow uncharacteristically wide and curious before hardening again.

 _Oh,_ thinks Gamora, _she thought I was waiting for her. That I wanted her._

Her head pounds. Without her morning routine of solitude, Gamora’s been snippy. She overheard Drax ask Peter if she was menstruating (“Can she _do_ that?”) and was honestly surprised when Peter answered that he didn’t know. Of course, she kept it to herself. Nebula had wormed her way into her head, now, certainly. This was her home. They were her family. So what if they didn’t understand the private workings of her body? And if they wanted to discuss it when they thought she couldn’t hear, that was their business. Men would have their follies.

(Nebula knows, Gamora reminds herself, exactly how her body works. She proved that once, in what feels like another lifetime.)

Presently, her sister slumps down, back against the cot, below Gamora’s bare legs. She looks up at her, head flipped back, throat exposed, a plea for intimacy on what she probably thinks are deaf ears. Her voice is rough.

“Nice blouse.”

“Thanks,” Gamora looks down, Peter’s _Tron_ tee shirt is drowning her slim figure. She pulls her knees to her chest and swivels around so she’s looking down Nebula’s throat like the barrel of a gun. It's the world's most awkward slumber party. 

“Peter’s.” They say at the same time. Gamora - an answer, and Nebula - a question. Her sister cocks her head, mouth twitching into a genuine smile. She looks almost bird-like, nervous, hesitant, and waiting to be fed. Their mouths, Gamora thinks, are far too close.

“It’s from a movie,” She whispers, “Terrans call it a movie. A big projection of images made to look like they’re moving. That’s how they entertain themselves.”

Nebula straightens her neck and leans forward, rubbing the corner of her organic eyelid. “Is that how?”

Neither of them have ever really been good at small talk.

 

iv.

 

“He thinks the world of you.”

Gamora nods. She’s getting used to it, her space and silence filled with something else she hadn't realized she had missed.

Nebula sits beside her today. She hasn’t bothered wiping the crust of sleep from her organic eye. She’s less machine than she appears at a glance, Gamora thinks. They both are.

“What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“Having someone,” Nebula starts, her voice cracking painfully in her throat, “love you more than anything.”

Gamora feels herself flood with something alien and for a moment, Nebula is no longer her enemy, or a stranger, or a prisoner, or her sister. She reaches towards her jaw, ignores Nebula flinching away, brushes her ear where there would be hair. Where there would be hair; thick, beautiful raven hair that Nebula had loved to brush and brush -- if Nebula had been raised instead of weaponized.

She loves Nebula. Because nobody else will. Because nobody else could possibly.

“Please,” Gamora whispers, “Nobody loves anyone more than they love themselves.”

She lets herself into Nebula’s space as casually as Nebula let herself into her quarters -- and lets herself hang there, cupping her chin, breathing her breath, before laying a kiss on her soft, warm lips. They move together, gently, knowing one another’s fragility, knowing that they can never return from this.

When they finally break apart, Nebula shudders.

“I do,” she says, “Love you more than I love myself.”

“Well, don’t.”

Gamora covers Nebula’s lips once again with her own, partially to drown her out and partially because she’s hungry, and partially because she wants to prove her wrong. She offers her tongue into the kiss, letting Nebula breath around it, feels the heat rising against her cheek. Her hands follow the curve of Nebula’s collar bone, in lieu of hair, breaching the neckline of her sleepshirt.

All gently, all carefully, because though Gamora is neither gentle or careful, she knows that it’s what Nebula deserves. She pushes her back against the cot and wrestles with the clothing before stopping -- breaking the kiss with a soft, satisfying little sound. Nebula sighs.

“Is it alright if I…” Gamora starts.

“Am I still your prisoner?”

Gamora feels her lip twitch. “Am I still your sister?”

Nebula offers herself, lifting her arms around Gamora neck, weaving fingers through Gamora’s sleep-tangled waves.

 

v.

 

“You can’t force someone to be part of your little family.”

Gamora feels her face harden, stopping right between Nebula’s thighs.

“Stop. Pushing me away.”

“He tried that, you know,” she spits, eyelashes fluttering, legs heavy across Gamora’s back. The floor of the ship is hard below her knees and she smells Nebula’s sweetness, can feel her own wetness still clothed, a secret.

Nebula’s eyes are lidded, stone cold, and it makes Gamora want to simultaneously ring her neck and hold her.

“Is this...not what you want?” She manages between heavy breaths. Nebula’s warmth is radiating out against her, and she’s so. damned. close to feeling her. Gods, she has missed feeling her.

Nebula shudders. “Is it about what I want?”

The blood rushes to Gamora’s cheeks. “Yes! Completely! Tell me to stop and I’ll stop. Tell me to leave and I’ll leave you alone.”

Nebula looks away from her, encircling her hair once again in inorganic muscle, wrapping it around a finger that was designed for the exact opposite kind of instinct.

“So I’m not really a prisoner then…”

She straightens then, pulling herself to her feet, the place where her weight had once been, a void. Gamora tenses around it, feels the hardness of her mattress, every soreness all at once, and she feels _old_.

“No,” she says finally, “Not really.”

 

vi.

 

Peter’s feet are dirty, up against the control panel, in the most maddeningly dangerous way. He doesn’t turn when Gamora walks in, but instead holds out a red cardboard box, labelled in the strange writing that she has come to recognize as Terran.

“‘Dude, you’ve got to try these,” he says, “Managed to nick ‘em off a trader in Borilia. This was my favorite superbowl snack as a kid. They’re called Cheez-its.”

“Cheez-its,” repeats Gamora, taking an unnaturally orange cracker between hesitant fingers. It tastes salty and greasy to her tongue. She can’t imagine why anyone would enjoy it.

“What’s a super bowl?”

“No,” Peter says, “Not super...bowl. _Superbowl._ One word. It’s a really important sports thing, a bunch of people get together to have a party and watch football. But everyone’s really just there to see the commercials.”

Gamora quirks an eyebrow. Terrans are funny to her, with their garbage food and love of advertisements. There’s nothing in the galaxy quite like them.

“Peter,” she says, taking a more serious tone, “I have to talk to you about something.”

“Mmm?” His mouth is full of cheez-its. They are staining his teeth.

“I can’t do this anymore. My history, my darkness. It’s just something you could never understand.”

As expected, he tenses, rubs the bridge of her nose. His eyes brim with hurt.

“Babe,” Peter sighs, “I don’t have to understand you to _love_ you, okay? We’ve been over this.”

In an instant, she feels her heart swell, beating in her ears, in her chest, through her pulse as loud as the whirring.

 _But you couldn’t_ , she wants to say, _love me if you knew._

 

vii.

 

The air on this planet is icy and a thick layer of snow covers the ground. It figures, Gamora thinks, that they were nothing but a glorified transport to her. Nebula pulls her furred hood over her bald scalp. So small there, on the ground, with the ship parked meters away. So small, compared to Drax, who is handing her her belongings. So small compared to the vastness of the unknown.

“Just like that,” she says to him flatly, not really a question, “Free again.”

“Gamora knows best when it comes to you,” he replies, “And she says you’ll never go back to Thanos.”

Nebula is looking past him, looking straight at Gamora, smiling. She still thinks it’s a competition, Gamora thinks, and wonders how to unbreak someone. If it’s possible for her, broken as she is, to unbreak someone.

Her body, with its own will, is walking towards the clearing, is pushing Drax gently aside.

“A word,” Gamora says, “With my sister. Alone.”

 

viii.

 

“We’ve saved each other over and over again,” Gamora says, “Why are you so intent to be my enemy?”

“Design,” says Nebula, “Destiny. Why call me a prisoner when you wanted a girlfriend?”

“I don’t want a --” Gamora says and then stops and then starts again, “ _Girlfriend._ I want to have you back. On your own terms. I don’t know how to have you but it’s _you_ I want. Only you, Nebula.”

“Get used to losing then,” Nebula quirks a little smile, “It’s about time. I am my own.”

“Good,” Gamora feels a lump building in her throat. “That’s all I really wanted, anyway.”

“I don’t get along with your friends,” says Nebula.

“I know.”

“And Peter --”

Gamora looks down, feels the shame heating her cheeks.

“We’re not good people,” she says, “But we can be.”

“Goodbye,” says Nebula, her sneer fragmented for a moment, “Sister dear.”

“I love you,” Gamora whispers, inaudibly, to the back on Nebula’s coat, “More than anything.”

 

And just like that, she is gone again.


End file.
